October 20, 2008

Boy, I hate to say I told ya so, but...actually, I don’t really hate it... I sorta love it, to be honest.

If you are like me, you may be racking your brains to remember when the last time you heard good news was. The economy is tanked, I can’t bring myself to even look at my 401k, the world is melting down around us...I’m a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Actually, it’s all that plus the trifecta of having drama in my family and at work that has me down, so I may be a little more sensitive to the bad news that you may be, what with virtually everything I care about in a state of upheaval.

But the news IS bad. Our industry is down, foot traffic is down, sales are down, profits are down, people are getting laid off, restaurants that we practically grew up with, like Bennigan’s, are closing, Landry’s is on the table...Landrys!...and the unthinkable happened when InBev actually bought Anheuser-Busch! Did you ever think you’d see the day when THAT happened? Not me..

People I care about are freaking out because they are going to be casualties of all these mergers...people with families and mortgages and futures are losing their jobs in the 4th qtr, in an economy that just lost ANOTHER 700 points last week...and no one is hiring. Bye-bye health insurance, see ya security...you can’t even borrow from your home equity because a. no one is lending and b. HA!, good luck getting equity out of a house that is worth less than you owe for it!

This is really dire. And it’s taking us down.

It used to be that the bar business was considered ‘recession-proof’...paraphrasing a quote I read in Cheers magazine, when the economy is great, people drink. When the economy sucks, people drink. And so it is, but here’s the problem...or is it a benefit?

People ARE still drinking, but they are drinking down. Now, before anyone jumps all over me, I’m not quoting statistics; I’m talking about what I’m seeing in my own restaurtants.

My guests are trading down to cheap beer. We are actually seeing an increase in our beer percentage of sales, all of it attrition from both spirits and wine. And with our COGS being virtually the same as last year in the midst of some of the most egregious cost increases experienced in 2008, that, anecdotally, tells me that guest are drinking the cheap stuff. Sales and purchasing info bears that out.

So, is this good or bad? That depends on what point of view you are looking at it from.

Certainly, like all full-service restaurants, we carry a vast selection of fine spirits, interesting craft and imported beers and moderately priced wines. We want to sell these things. These offerings bring in good margins. But they are also fairly high in cost of goods. You can’t eat COGS, so we want these to sell and get that money in the till.

But, like it our not, we are generally judged in our performance within our companies on COGS.
The optimal scenario is low COGS with high margins. But if you can’t get the high margins because people are trading down, then let’s hope you can get profits up by going around through the back door and lowering your COGS so that more of whatever margin you get falls to the bottom line.

So in this case, with the trade down, we are at least getting a lower COG in the well and domestic macro boom going on right now...at least in our stores.

But that leaves us sitting on a lot of costly products that one must have in order to have a well-stocked bar. We have to keep the stuff around, but it’s not moving like it needs to. Oh, sure, we can brow-beat the staff into the aggressive upsell, but that’s not what they are doing. ‘They’ are us and they are suffering as much as anyone and, restaurant people being in the service industry, ipso facto, they want to serve the guest and the way they are doing it now is to point out the best ways to save money on a bill, against their best interests, since tips are based on total spend, but hoping that honesty will be rewarded by the saved money going into the server’s tip.

Not to mention that, as things slow down, like in any other industry, we are having to cut staff to save labor, resulting in the only way ‘trickle-down economics’ has ever actually worked...foot traffic is down, so we cut staff, so the staff has less time to sell to guests, resulting in less sales, requiring more cuts with less staff to sell...trickling down and spinning in circles all at the same time leaving us...well...screwed.

So, bottom line, we’re taking a huge hit in this economy, and that light at the end of the tunnel IS a train...things are going to get worse before they get better, I’m afraid.

So what do we do now?

Oh, you thought I had an answer here? Like some pontificating oracle, perhaps? A veritable Nostradamus, if you will?

Nope, I’m as flummoxed as you are as to what to do. I just presented my 2009 forecast and I’m PRAYING it’s only 6% inflation, after price events. Sadly, I think it will be more, not to mention that, even with gas prices dropping, we are still paying gas and delivery charges- charges that may go away on paper, but, once having that income, distributors will find a way to keep it, likely in increased broken case charges or just spread out into small across-the-board cost increases.

So, no answers here. You got any? If so, share them with me at Beverage.goddess@yahoo.com. I will compile them and post them here. C’mon now, we are all in this together...share what you are doing so that, together, we can ride this financial tsunami and come out the other side whole.

In the meantime, I will be doing what any self-respecting Beverage Goddess would do...drown my sorrows in my favorite beverage, which, at the moment, is arsenic. Cheers.

I hate stealing menus, but sometimes, you just gotta. You want to see what the competition is doing, what they are charging in your markets, what offerings they are focusing on.

You need to see what their market research has yielded in terms of pricing, or do they even list prices or what size vessel or branded or not.

Who made their wine list...is it eclectic or a sell-out to a single producer/broker/distributor? How many listings? How many bottles, drafts, signature cocktails, alc-frees? Free refills or no?

Don’t tell me you haven’t cased a room to see where your server is or if anyone is paying attention and crammed a full-on menu into your obscenely large purse. Or hied on into the restroom, only to totter out stiffly with a 2 foot-long tri-fold jammed down the back of your pants.

I don’t know about you, but I always feel terrible and guilty doing it, but how else to get the info you need to compete?

Well, there’s lying. I’ve heard of people calling up a restaurant with some false pretense..

‘Hello...Tiffany, is it? Hey Tiffany, I’m considering having a bridal shower/birthday/happy hour/team celebration at your restaurant and I was wondering if you could tell me about your happy hour offerings/prices/discounts... yeah, great, so is that a regular sized jack and coke for a buck or a smaller version? And what time do you run your Happy Hour? Is that weekends, too? Does the dollar discount apply to all sizes of beer and, by the way, what sizes do you offer? No, no, don’t get your manager.. I just, well, yeah, I think I have enough here. I’ll call back later to make my reservation.”

Not that I’VE ever done that. I, of course, pay people....

But it’s not just my idea to do it.. the bosses are always saying go to so and so’s and get a menu. OK, so now I have to walk into a restaurant with the intention of leaving with something that does not belong to me, something that cost the establishment a couple of bucks and do something I don’t want MY competitors to do to me. But they do, because they have to.

Now, one could say, just get the ‘to-go’ menu and that would be a good solution for a purloiner bent on dissecting food menus. But that doesn’t help your friendly neighborhood Goddess, as, unless you are in Vegas or N’awlins’, there ain’t no ‘booze to go’.

So we steal menus.

But let’s not. I say, we should be able to call our comestible comrades, our beverage bro’s, our cocktail cousins and just ask them to send us a PDF of their menus. And why not? It’s cheaper than constantly having them walk out the door shoved down someone’s back-side and we’re going to get them anyway...

And, while there IS the intellectual property thingy, well, that’s moot, because we’re STEALING THE MENU. There it all is, in print. So you can give it to us or we can take it...either way, we end up with your information and you end up with ours when YOUR boss sends you on a reconnaissance mission to my place with your thieving sticky fingers..

I say we, as operators, make a pact that we will send out our menus to anyone who makes a request, so that we can all get right with the laws of man and the Universe and stop having to pinch the menus.

It would save us all a lot of money and hell-fire and damnation. After all, some religious philosophies claim that any sin is as bad as all sin and I sure don’t want to have to fry in Hades because of your Kiddy Kocktail menu.

So, Operators, I make this vow to you... you can call me up any time and just ask me for my menus. I will email you the PDF forthwith and save myself $5 per menu for the effort.

Er, well, I would, if you knew who I was in my other, non-Goddessy life...but, in theory....I’m just sayin’...

So, let’s stop stealing each others menus and cooperate. After all, in this climate of mergers and acquisitions, we may be working together tomorrow at Chilibee’s or MacLobster’s or Montana Grilligan’s or The Cracker Factory...so let’s work together today, share our menus and avoid eternal damnation.

Why do I love it so much? Have you tasted it? It tastes like the scent of honeysuckle on a breeze, like fresh, musky lychee fruit, like succulent peach nectar, like liquid happiness! All packaged in a beautiful beveled glass bottle bearing a remarkable resemblance to a top-heavy femme. And apparently, there is a guy in France traipsing around the Alps on a bicycle picking elderflowers just for me! Right now! As we speak!

Being a simple goddess, I prefer the signature St~Germain cocktail...a delectably large tot of the liqueur with champagne, club soda and a saucy twist of lemon. But in perusing their website, I found numerous cocktails that I will hasten to try, not least because of their clever asides embedded within their recipes. Such witty repartee reminds me of someone.. thinking ..thinking...

I discovered this elixir several years ago at one of our golf tournaments, when one of my distributors donated a case of the minis, also festively clad in the sexy bottle. (sidebar: it just tickles me that mini’s are just that.. teeny, tiny Lilliputian versions of themselves..same bottle, same labels... it cracks me up to see the teensy little Crown Royal bottle or the Dimple Pinch or the Tanqueray... but then, we have established that I am easily amused...). I had never even heard of St~Germain before. The minis were destined for the goody bags.

Sadly for some, after cracking it open, sucking it down and rejoicing in the sublime glow, I then absconded with as many minis as I could find without actually wrestling the bags out of our golfer’s hands.

Fast forward to about a month ago. We were having a farewell dinner for one of our comrades who was leaving. (another sidebar: a futile and wasteful practice, because we must have the highest percentage of boomerang employees on record...the latest was only gone for 3 weeks before she came back. “Hey, sad to see you go! Here’s an expensive party! See you in a few weeks!”). As I waited at the bar, I, being a writer of menus and also unable to sort through the myriad of options for cocktails entrenched in my brain, rendering it impossible to order in any semblance of quickly, picked up the sticky bar menu and right there at the top of the page was my old friend, The St~Germain Cocktail, singing her siren song of promises of deliciousness.

“I’ll have this”, says I. I said that about four more times through out the evening...which is awesome!! It is light enough in ABV for me to have several, which I promptly did.

Now, you may be asking yourself, why the long stretch of time betwixt discovery and enamored? Well, as I have noted in past blogs, I’m actually not much of a drinker. I am a lover of all things beverage, but not a consumer so much. So, since I hadn’t seen it around anywhere, nor had anyone presented it to me (bad reps!), I had forgotten about it.

But thanks to that sticky menu and my revolving co-worker, I was reminded and am now firmly in the cult of Germain. And now that I know there are bicycling Frenchmen risking life and limb in the mountains of France just for me to possess the heavenly nectar, I shall not ever again forget. In fact, it is the only liqueur I have actually me myself purchased in years! (I am a ‘buyer’, which means I don’t actually ever have to buy anything to have the world’s best liquor cabinet. Ironic.)

So, if you haven’t tried it yet, do yourself a favor and hie on down to the liquor store and pay your money. You will not be sorry!

And if I see a rash of baby goddesses named Oenoli in the future, I will know you appreciated that advise. Vive la France! Vive la St~Germain!

(All goddessy opinions are free and sincere. No recompense was paid for this or any endorsement. Though I’m open to that. I can be bought.)

If you have a question or comment for the One Most High, email her at beverage.goddess@yahoo.com

March 18, 2008

Today, I learned that one of my bartenders from my last operations job passed away. He was one of my closest friends at that job; my right-hand guy, my liaison between management and the staff. My inventory buddy. It’s very sad. He wasn’t even 40.

Sadder still was that I hadn’t seen him in a number of years, because, as so often happens, one moves on from one job to another and, even though you thought you’d never lose touch, you do.

Oh, you SAY you won’t, but it’s the very nature of our business that we get close to the trench mates who surround us now and we leave behind the ones we truly cared about when we worked together. Why do we do that? Are our relationships that superficial?

No, not superficial, but, apparently, conditional. Conditional on the fact that we work together and see each other every day. And when we don’t, out of sight, out of mind. We find a whole new set of people in the next job to immerse ourselves in. New people to watch the sunrise with after a slammin’ Friday night. To sweat in the trenches with when the AC goes out on a hot August night. To laugh and point at people with from the behind the bar. New people to head to the local after-work watering hole with.

Certainly, there are those whose friendship remains throughout the years and jobs. My best friend and a couple of ex-fiancés come to mind. But most of our co-workers will one day fall by the wayside and we won’t see or hear about them again until something like this happens. We get the call from yet another beloved ex- co-worker we haven’t seen in years with the sad news and the memories of lost friends come rushing back.

The very bad news is you have to go send your friend off way too early and far ahead of his time; the good news, if there is any, is that you get to see some of those people who wandered off and catch up on the last 5, 10, 20 years.

So, we gather, older and hopefully wiser, to say good-bye to someone we essentially said good-bye to years before, though we didn’t know it at the time and to say hello again to others, with the requisite promises of getting together ‘soon.’

But you know you never will. You want to. But you don’t.

This fact doesn’t make these friendships any less real...just real for a specific place in time. And, in this business, we are bound to have a lot of people come and go in our lives...again, the nature of the business.

But we should do whatever we can to let the people we care about know that we do, so we don’t end up telling their family on some sad day in a church filled with flowers how much we loved them and how they will be missed.

Kevin made my time in that bar more fun. Now he’ll be pulling brews and telling jokes to the angels at that Big Bar in the Sky. And I’ll tell his family that I’ll miss him. I should have told him.

*******

If you have questions or comments for the Beverage Goddess, you may contact Her Highness at beverage.goddess@yahoo.com.

February 26, 2008

As Spring waxes into Summer, you will hear that phrase that irritates me right down to my eternal, goddessy bones. As school lets out and the teeming masses of Gen Y/Millennial/Whatever Stupid Generational Moniker That Comes After Millennials come home to roost, they will descend upon the modest, unassuming restaurant looking for jobs.

But not just ANY job... a job they can do ‘until they get a REAL job’.

Yes, folks.. those of us who have spent our lives in the food & bar business.. we apparently do not have 'real jobs'.

Not real, those days when the ‘bus lets out’ and you, your one closing server and your scruffy line cook pull off a miracle of food preparation and service.

Completely faux those long days in the office trying to find a snowball’s chance in hell of meeting your budget.

A mirage that you sleep in your office in your chair after a 16 hour run with a banquet tablecloth as a poor excuse for a blanket because you have a clopen.

No, apparently, the only ‘real’ jobs are those outside of the food & bar service industry. But don’t believe me. Just try taking any kind of poll or survey. Scan the abundant list of jobs someone considers real.

If you are lucky, and only recently, you MAY find something like ‘food service and manufacture’ or ‘hospitality’. As if those limited categories could cover the range of positions within them. But a server isn’t a cook isn’t an assembly line worker isn’t a concierge isn’t a pastry chef isn’t a front desk clerk isn’t a bar manager isn’t a sommelier.

When you check ‘accountant’, that pretty much says it all.. you account for things. Or you are a doctor, a lawyer or an indian chief. Perhaps an retail associate or a miner or a carpenter. All these jobs have their special category, as many do and are fairly obvious as to what they entail.

For us, there is the ubiquitous ‘Other’.

OK. So those are real jobs, but so are ours and, as the biggest industry in America, if not the world, you’d think that we would get the justice we deserve and not just be a bi-way where young people stop on their way to respectable industry.

You know, I believe that OUR industry is, in fact, the oldest profession. The default is, of course, of the silver boot wearing, hoochie-mama, saucy tart persuasion.

But let’s consider...before there was pay to play, there were people eating and drinking and someone making and serving all those comestibles. In fact, the very first thing we do after getting squeezed out and slapped is have us a nice long drink of mother’s milk off the proffered tap.

So, when you hear.. or rather overhear.. a young’un talking about how they are ‘only doing this until I graduate and get a real job’, ask them these questions:

 Is there a roof over your head?
 Are you eating?
 Do you have money?
 Gas in your car?
 CD’s, clothes, an I-Phone, shoes?

That’s a real job that provides all that.

And then ask:
 Do you really think that you are gonna pull down $1000 bucks a week, drink pretty much for free, eat like a king, party like it’s 1999, have a slew of PYT’s at your fingertips, tell the boss when YOU can work and watch a million beautiful sunrises with a posse of great friends-for-now at your entry level accounting job?

Food and Beverage work is REAL work. Important work. We feed the hungry, water the masses, provide a place to celebrate, hang out, watch the team, break up, entertain the kinder, people watch, try the latest trendy cocktail.

We remember our guests, know their stories, look forward to seeing them, run our butts off at their every bidding. We work long hours, rarely get weekends or holidays off, do double shifts, clopen, fill in, take on, bust out.

In fact, we get to do the funnest job on earth...a job that pays us well, allows us to delay maturity, provides a steady stream of new friends and lets us live large.

My little goddessy friend Andrea likes to say that, when it came time to chose what to do with her life, she ‘checked the fun box’ and picked the restaurant business.

So, go ahead, be a shopkeeper or a computer programmer or a scientist or a realtor. Find your path. But don’t for a minute think that this hospitable life isn’t a real job.

January 30, 2008

As often happens round about this time of year, I have just returned from the Cheers Beverage Conference in beautiful downtown Miami, Cuba and, as it always does, it has returned me home with a head full of ideas...mostly on how to beat the snot out of this years award winners with my fabulous programs, promotions and signature drinks... I’ll get you, my pretties.

I am so not above unleashing a flying monkey or two...

So, where were you? If you were lucky enough to have convinced the boss of you that this is, by far, the most valuable expense of your time and your company’s treasure, you got to see several dynamic general session speakers, as well as participate in some great break-out sessions, all of which had you walking out of the room smarter.

We were fortunate to hear Bob Brown tell us about the Seven Gates to Beverage Sales Success, and we now know that It’s OK to be the Boss from Bruce Tulgan and that the fern bars of our baby-boomer youth have morphed into the luxury bars of our dreams through adaptation and innovation from Ruth’s Chris’ Craig Miller.

And the aforementioned breakouts were spot-on to the trends and issues that keep us up at night... ignition interlocks and the ever less inconceivable return of Prohibition, the soaring costs of everything we buy, dealing with the brave new world of supplier and distributor consolidations, legal liabilities, and a myriad of other, pertinent topics.

Thankfully, we were talked off the ledge by such luminaries as the Venerable Plotkin and The Beaumont of Beer, who regaled us with the new trends in alcohol-free offerings and blunted the edge of our financial despair with beer and food pairings... I love the smell of beer in the morning...

One of the best things was the opportunity to observe some of the brightest new stars in the Mixology world in action and taste some of their incredible creations. As an old broad, it just makes me all tingly to see young people so dedicated to the Art of the Bar. As a once and future bartender myself, I am delighted to see my lifelong profession finally getting the respect it deserves.

As I have often said, anyone can tend a bar.. but it takes a special, skilled, artistic mien to be a Bartender. This was in abundant evidence with the Rising Star Beverage Bar Professionals from around the country and the beloved quartet of Abou-Ganim, Lafranconi, Reiner and Magarian. Such creativity! Such expertise! Such a joy to observe! Life is always so very much better when I have a beautifully hand-crafted cocktail in my mitts. Reminds me of why I got into this gig to begin with.

***

This year, the planners of this great event took pity on us all, starting the day with breakouts at 9am and the general sessions in the late morning and early afternoon, making it easier to:

 Actually get some sleep, a rare commodity whenever there are beverage folk and beverages in the same area code. It’s like we’ve never seen a cocktail...

 Arrive at the sessions rested, bright-eyed and coherent after the requisite late night festivities that wax and wane into the wee hours of each evening. It’s so much better for attention and retention to not be nodding off during the general session. And, man!, it was great to see my reps and colleagues actually flesh-toned! Who knew?

 Get some work done before the sessions start. It’s often difficult to stay focused and in touch on your job when the schedule is too tightly packed. Getting a good amount of actual for-my-job work done and phone calls returned over a semi-leisurely breakfast before the first breakouts made the whole conference flow so much better.

Also, planned cocktail events were earlier in the evening, allowing one to hook up with colleagues and vendors for dinner and STILL get in at a reasonable time...in order to drink like proverbial fish in the hotel bar until closing.

Whatever. Priorities.

So, all in all, it was, once again, a valuable, interesting, exciting, entertaining, worthwhile expenditure of time.

I’ve not missed a one... eleven years, eleven Cheers Beverage Conferences, eleven trips to exciting and wonderful places steeped in food and beverage culture...Chicago, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Miami, Los Angeles... where I get to learn what the experts know, see ALL my favorite vendors and meet new ones, sample great new products, do some really cool things on yachts and beaches, eat at great restaurants, pick the brains of my fellow Beverage Operator Trenchmates, listen to fantastic speakers, drink innovative, cutting edge cocktails made by the very hand of my boyfriend Tony Abou-Ganim, hook up with friends I only get to see once a year (I missed ya, Jack...), give Ken Collura a smooch, get the inside scoop, the low-down, the poop, the 411.

Whatever it is you want to know about this business of beverage, you will find it at Cheers.

It crossed my mind during this conference that someday, I, Goddess, may not be in this business anymore...after all, I’m no spring deity...and I thought how sad I will be when I can no longer attend Cheers.

I wonder if there is an Cheers EAB emeritus program, so that no matter where my life takes me, I can keep going to Cheers, as long as they will have me. Of course, I will have to buy the time of day, as a Goddess with no more purchasing dollars is a lonely Goddess, indeed.

Only 355 days left until Cheers 2009.....I can hardly wait....not least because, for that one shimmering, busy, interactive, fun and educational week, my dance card is completely full.

December 07, 2007

Wow... I’ve been out of touch with you guys for over a month! OK, two. Whatever. I could regale you with numerous superlatives as to how stinkin’ busy I’ve been, but I’ll just throw this your way... I’m smack-dab in the middle of producing about 100..that’s right, 100, different Beverage menus.. one for each store, all festively unique, because God forbid anyone should compromise. Commence with the pity.

Much as this tries my very soul, it does allow me to momentarily stop the obsessing about what is to come in 2008 for our beloved industry. Being all goddessy and whatnot, I have intimate access to Oracles and what they’re saying keeps me awake at night.

Fuel prices are going through the roof, hops are becoming scarce and more expensive, no one grows barley anymore because corn is so lucrative, but all the corn is going to ethanol and feed, which is going up, up, up, so food costs more, breweries are panicking, no one knows what to do about the lack of hops crops, drought is hurting the Australian wine industry, keg theft has pushed cooperage to $30 a keg, brewers are foisting higher-cost 1/6th barrels on the market, with the requisite 20% increase in ounce cost, the minimum wage hikes are costing a bundle, oh and by the way, the Big R looms ahead no matter what the Fed says... customers are watching their wallets and staying home more or trading down and I don’t know about you, but I’m a little freaked!

In the words of someone or other, I think we are heading into a perfect storm. Lordy, I hope I’m wrong. But it doesn’t look good from where I sit and as an operator, the litany above presents a multitude of trickle-down problems.

To make sure I wasn’t just a Chicken Little Freak, I did a survey of about 30 operators, suppliers and distributors about two months ago, and it was a pretty gloomy task. Glad to know I’m not alone in my worry; terrified to have my worst fears confirmed from various aspects of the industry.

So we all agree that 2008 is gonna be a ‘witch’, but what to do about it?

Well, we can take price, and, most likely, everyone will, as least to some extent.. but I can’t mitigate a 10% increase in costs with a similar increase in prices...at some point, customers just say no.

We can focus on cost control.. always a winner, but not something ignored regularly, so unless one is not paying attention at all, the gains might be minimal.

We can re-engineer our menus...try to keep the flash with less costly ingredients...for example, pour Smirnoff Vanilla in a Signature drink instead of Stoly...but keep it sexy enough to maintain most of the retail price. We can put one ounce of croutons on a salad instead of two, cut the limes into 6ths instead of quarters...avoid those damned 1/6th barrels, build wine lists with less expensive wines from non-drought ravaged viticultural areas..

We could try to buy more locally to avoid shipping surcharges.. a lovely thought, but no one makes scotch in these here mountains. We could stand at our bars and hairy eyeball our bartenders for waste and over-pouring. We could browbeat our staff into upselling... we could, we could, we could...

We could do a lot of things, some of which will work; others will be an exercise in futility.

So I guess all we really can do is take a hard, seriously, business-focused look at the areas we can improve upon, like menu engineering, smarter purchasing and cost controls, and let go of the things we cannot influence, like the hop crops, the price of steel, shipping, minimum wage increases (which, BTW, I am completely in favor of as a human being...not so much as a restaurateur..). Forego some of the woo-hoo fun part of why we got into this gig and really think about how to weather this storm. Hunker down and accept the fact that we may have to realize slightly lower margins and profits to stay competitive...because if we’re hurting, so are our customers and slamming them with big pricing increases is a fast track to empty bars.

As I have been known to say while negotiating discounts with suppliers who are overly impressed with their own product and charging based on that elevated opinion, ‘You can sell a lot of product for less money or no product for more. Pick.’

We’ll get through this, certainly...people have to eat and drink, after all.. but we should be well prepared to pro-act to the storm that’s a-comin’.

Fortunately, the nature of our business ensures that, if we do, at times, give way to despair, there’s plenty of booze at arm’s reach.

September 25, 2007

This is a day the gods have made. As long as I live, I will never have a better day than this one...as good, surely, but not likely better. This is the day I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. This is the day I go to Italy.

We dock at Civitavecchia, which is the port of Rome. Rome is about 2 hours away, but we are not headed there. As part of a day arranged by our group leaders, we are off to Vignanello, a little medieval town that rests in the V created where the Tuscan and Umbrian regions meet.

The day doesn’t start off so great...we load all 150 of us onto 2 busses and off we go. About an hour into the trip, we stop at a gas station for a restroom break. Only there’s only one each. And since it appears that my travel companions all are in possession of bladders the size of walnuts, this stop stretches into about a 45 minute ordeal. But all was not lost, for we discovered shrimp flavored potato chips! Apparently, Europeans cannot just enjoy the earthy goodness of the potato without giving it various embellishments like the aforementioned crustacean powder or chicken or beef. Yep, beef potato chips....

But off we go, to arrive like a marauding band of Visigoths into the tiny heart of this medieval village. This is not a tourist village, so we are the subject of much interest, causing the old men sitting in the square (just like you picture them doing) to stand up! and the old women to cut short their noontime Mass. Maybe because the herd of us entered the back of their lovely gothic church on tiptoes, ever so quietly, just like a sirocco bansheeing across the Sahara or a lithe and lilting jack-hammer.

Again, just like you would picture, the townswomen are leaning out their windows and explaining to their children that those loud people are AMERICANS! in much the same way as a mother would point out the MONKEYS! at the zoo.

What happens next begins this most amazing of days. Our Italian guide Alvaro announces that he will walk over the drawbridge of the castle fortress that makes up one side of the square and knock on the door to see if his friend is home.

So he knocks.

The heavy battering-ram proof door swings open...

Suddenly there are drums, and flags and villagers dressed in local traditional dress, drumming and flagging us into the castle keep lined with medieval weaponry and torches and over another drawbridge into to most beautiful 16th century garden, laid out in box hedges.

We are the guests of Princess Claudia Giada Ruspoli and we will be wined and dined and entertained for the next several hours in her castle home with its famous gardens overlooking the Umbrian countryside. Seriously. Seriously.

Drummed and fifed, we make our way into the garden. It is a cloudless day, with a light breeze...just exactly like you want it to be. To the right, under the arbor of trees lining that side of the garden are tables set for lunch. Somewhere in the distance, a harp is playing. We are given a glass of Prosecco and introduced to the princess, who tells us about her castle and gardens.

Then come the flag-throwers.

Sidebar: It is a particularly intriguing thing, this fondness for throwing flags in the air that the Italians have. Apparently, much honor and pride is invested in these troupes of flingers and villages stake their community pride and reputations on the skill of their local tossers. It seems, from what I can gather, that the flag flinging has something to do with communicating during medieval battles. But now, it’s a bunch of guys in puffy shirts and tights.. er, I mean, traditional Renaissance dress, throwing flags in the air and to each other for about an hour. In the hot sun. With no more wine in my glass.

But now it’s time for lunch! And what a feast it is! We walk over to the tables under the shady trees and grapevines as an Italian tenor starts to sing and what lays before us is epic...tables of pasta, locally made by the hands of the women in front of us making it, a small boar, roasted and crispy, a table filled with a variety of salads... Caprese, olive, green, pasta.. a table filled with cheeses and fruits and fresh Ciabatta breads and the most amazing thing of all...and entire table upon which is laid out, in single overlapping layers, about 10 pounds of wafer-thin prosciutto ... just laid out there, all over the table! It was so cool!

And the wines! Locally grown and vinted, we are privileged to drink their Santa Bruna Vignanello Rosso, a blend of 50% Sangiovese and 50% Ciliegiolo, a red grape variety whose origins are attributed to Spain. Legend has it that its presence in Italy is due to pilgrims who returned with it from their pilgriming in Spain. Currently, Ciliegiolo is cultivated almost exclusively in Umbria and is grown inland in a somewhat cool climate and drunk young, like Beaujolais.

According to the translated tasting notes, this wonderful wine “binds together to appetizers of earth and meats very well white women”. I swear I didn’t make that up and yes, as a white women, I can say it does meats well.

Alongside the Santa Bruna was Libentino Trebbiano of the Lazio, a 100% Trebbiano (also known as Ugni Blanc) from different growing regions, blended into a crisp white quaff that was perfect with the salad course of our meal and for the red wine scardy-cats.

But the piece de resistance was the wine the served for dessert. OMG.

Expecting tiramisu, we, instead, got a light and lovely mousse cake, made with dark chocolate, delicious on its own merits. But when paired with the unbelievably fantastic Banfi Rosa Regale Sparkling Brachetto, it all became one of the most amazingly fabulous food and wine pairings I have ever been privileged to experience. So much so that I made everyone at my table go get another dessert and a glass of this heavenly elixir and walk through the pairing of it with me.

I think they were afraid not to, since I was a little wild-eyed and stupefied over the whole thing.. better just to humor me...

But they were to a (wo)man glad they did. The Rosa Regale is an explosion of blood-red color, raspberries and roses, sparkly and fruity. When I googled it, the description said “...it is appreciated as one of the few wines in the world that truly marries well with chocolate, especially dark or bittersweet...” And then some. And then some more.

Sidebar: Go get some now. I mean it.. NOW! Because the gods have smiled upon us and it is available right here in America, for which I shall be eternally grateful. And it’s only 7% alcohol, so I...you.. can drink the whole bottle! And you will. Go.

Whew!.. all worked up again...

We were taken on a tour of the castle, which, as I said, is Princess Claudia’s actual home, as evidenced by the toiletries on the bathroom counters. Then, in one of the upstairs ballrooms, next to the room the Pope had stayed in long, long ago, we had a short concert of harpsichord and horn, featuring the music of Handel. It turns out that a majority of Handel’s cantatas were written during his 1706-1710 stay at Castello Ruspoli, this very castle, where he was under the patronage (aka cash umbrella) of the Marchese Ruspoli, ancestor to our own princess.

The rest of this perfect day was spent with music, sword-fighting with real medieval sabers, more drums and flags and young Italian men in tights.

Princess Claudia and her majordomo, Gina

We say good-bye to our new friends and load back onto the bus. As we drive west to Civitavecchia, the sun blazes down from the sky pulling a soft rose blanket behind it. It has been a perfect day and I will end it upon returning to the Queen, because I want nothing else but what I have had this day.

I spent one day in Italy. I cannot imagine in my vividest of imaginations how it could have been any better than it was.

Unless one of those yummy sword-fighters had come back to the ship with me....
Next: Pt. 5- Sardinia and Valencia

September 07, 2007

Recently, a regular reader of this blog asked me what my life (travels, observations, fevered rantings, etc.) had to do with beverage, this being a beverage blog and all. Fair question.

And to that I say- everything.

Since I first started working back in 1973, I have been in the hospitality business. Server, Cocktailer, Bartender, Bar Manager and finally, working to direct and support over 100 bars all over the U.S. It is all I’ve ever done, in all my working life. I cannot separate my life from the bar, since it has been my life, all my life.

It is woven through the fabric of my existence. I think about it every single day, whether working or not, because it forms the base of my perspective... I see everything through its lens.

So when I am writing these essays, which gives me no end of pleasure, I write from the perspective that my life and beverage are not separate. That, in fact, Life itself and beverage are not separate. I cannot imagine life without the extra specialness beverage brings to it.

On this blog site, you have so many really smart people... Jack, who covers the industry so well and thoroughly; Stephen, who is the odds-on expert on everything you will now or will ever want to know about beer; The Venerable Plotkin, who is the last word on All Things Bar; Donna, Ken, Gary, the others... all experts in their field, excellent, engaging writers, pillars of the industry.

And then there’s me. I got nuthin’. They have forgotten more than I will ever know. They are The Real Deal. Yeah, I know the industry, but not like Jack and Donna and Robert. I know more than most about beer, but I’m no Stephen. I have a certificate that says I’m a sommelier, but wouldn’t even open a bottle in front of Ken...

I’m just a bar chick with a passable ability to string words together, who has spent 70.84% of her life working the stick, slinging the drinks, driving the Big Bar Bus and running great bars. Beverage is my life. My life is beverage.

And that’s the thing. I write about beverage as it is interwoven into life. As it is interwoven into MY life, in a way that I hope is entertaining.

Beverages make the moments of our lives special. The hammock on the beach, the picnics in the park, the sunsets, boat rides, celebrations, holidays, brunches, camp outs, ball games, birthdays, vacations.... all are great on their own, but add a fruity Mai Tai, a Chianti in a basket bottle, a salty Margarita, a frosty cold malted beverage, a sparkling Mimosa, a chewy craft brew, a lilting champagne ...whatever.. to any event and it becomes specialer... that’s right, once again, the English language being not big enough for me, specialer!

I mean, imagine a barbecue without brewski’s, an Italian wedding without Prosecco and crappy cardboard cookies, a vacation without umbrella drinks, tapas without a Rioja, cheese and crackers without over-oaked chardonnay.. can you? Would you want to?

So I write about how these and many other beverages are woven through my awareness and my enjoyment of the events of my life...that Vinho Verde in Lisbon, the rosé in Provence, the Mojitos in Key West, the Whiskey on the River Bush in Northern Ireland, the ice cold milk at the family camp, the World of Port in Sintra, teatime on the QE2, tankards of dunkel at Oktoberfest ...

Because of beverage- all beverage, leaded or not- these moments were indelibly etched into my psyche even more tangibly then they might have otherwise been, because I added, through beverage, a physical touchstone to an existential experience, making it more real and concrete through the marriage.

And that, my friends, is what I am trying to do here... to share my view, through snark and humor, that beverage is not just a mood alterer or social lubricant or a profit vehicle or a business commodity, but, when used properly, in moderation, a fundamental element in enhancing the wonderful, memorable moments of your life to make them MORE wonderful and MORE memorable. And I do that by telling you my stories.

So when I write about my life on these pages, I am writing about beverage because, for me, beverage isn’t just something to drink or sell...it’s the blood in my veins, the cherry on top, the icing on the cake, the silver lining, the pot of gold at the end of my rainbow. And my life is more specialer for it.